Yet another in a long series of diversions in an attempt to avoid responsibility

Entries tagged with sectus

Suffice to say, somewhere in the midst of the whirlwind of the movie release, Sectus, the book release, Prophecy, and LiveJournal becoming Hosebeast^2, I've become completely overwhelmed. Tell me, how many of you are finding yourselves unable to do almost anything but sit at the computer if you want to have ANY chance of catching up with e-mail and friends lists? I can't do it, my loves. CAN'T DO. I want to friend everyone back. I want to comment to everyone. I want to answer all my e-mail. (If I haven't replied to an e-mail or LJ comment from you, or haven't friended you back yet, please understand, I'm overwhelmed and exhausted. Remind me in a week, if I haven't replied by then, and if I'm important enough to you.) I want to talk about Sectus and Prophecy. I want to give a proper review of Deathly Hallows. I want to discuss the movie(s). I want to give my opinion of HPEF and how they handled what could have been the best convention yet. I want to sound off on LJ and their complete ass-hattery. I can't.

So, I'm going to try to give the basics here, on the most important stuff (conventions and LJ), and post comments to other people's entries when my brain is slightly recovered.

First, important info outside the LJ-cut:

I already had both JournalFen and GreatestJournal accounts, and I've just created an InsaneJournal account.My screen name is "mijan" on JF, GJ, and IJ. So, I should be easy to find. In the meantime, I'm not officially moving yet. I've got the other three journals ready and waiting, but for now, I'm still here. For now.

and furiosity(respectively) that pretty much summarize my thoughts on it, too. Don't get me wrong, there were quite a few very good things at the convention. I had a great time in Toronto. The unofficial programming was great. I loved getting together with people, seeing old friends, meeting new ones. The Room of Requirement (as that alcove near the ballroom at the base of the stairs came to be called) was perfect. (I had a major sense of deja-vu in there.) The meetups were grand. Hanging out at the concert was a blast, especially with my darling Voldemort, jaina12. (Your costume was better than ever, Voldy, dear. I love what you've done with your hair. *wink*) Being pulled into random roundtables and discussions as I'm walking by... excellent. Selling wands, fun. Shocking the hell out of people by wearing a floor-length red dress to the second half of the ball... priceless. Drabbles and drawbles and random squeeing. Hanging out in the way-too-small Wi-Fi area in the lobby... amusing. Late night take-out. Twelve-pound bags of chocolate-chip cookies. Desperation for Tim Horton's coffee. Getting tackled by people I hadn't seen in way too long. Making inappropriate wand inuendo. That's what Prophecy was all about for me. And guys, if I tried to shout-out right now, I think my brain would explode. I'll try for that in a later post. But I saw so many people, including people I've wanted to meet for ages. (ESSA! OMFG*tackleglompsqueee!*)

However, that's where my compliments for Prophecy end, because that's where HPEF begins. Oh, HPEF. What are we going to do with you? You did some things well. I'll give you that. However, from what I experienced personally, your idiocy has overshadowed your positive contributions. Other people have gone into detail, but I want to summarize my own personal experience, and a few things that others have told me that haven't made it into summaries. First, my roundtable. My own personal rant against these idiots. MY FUCKING ROUNDTABLE. It's the first venture I've ever made into formal programming, and I was SO excited about it. VERY excited. Positively squeeful. I agreed to have the time changed because HPEF messed up and booked someone else into two places at the same time. No problem, I'm flexible. They told me that there would be a flier in the programming booklet with the new time listed. That's cool. Pretty much everyone reads the flier that gives the corrections for the full schedule. But THEN, they wrote the WRONG DAY on the flier! The roundtable was Friday at 3:00, but they wrote Saturday. NOT COOL. Not just to me, but what about the people who had planned to attend, and discovered on Saturday that their regularly scheduled slash was... not scheduled? SO NOT ON. I tried to tell as many people as possible. That's the only reason I had ANYONE there. And even if they had tried to correct their incorrect correction with some new distribution of information... it FAILED TO DISTRIBUTE.

That says nothing about how they invaded fiona_fawkes's "Shipping Harry" panel, attempting to cut it short without prior notice, and so rudely stating that they were NICE enough to let HER go over time, when she still had 15 minutes left! And she told all of her attendees that they needed to clear out! And why? Because Steve Vander Orc was next to present in that room. Get a bit of celebrity, and all of a sudden, anyone else is dirt. I'm sorry, but isn't that something that we of fandom don't condone?

It wasn't just that. Oh no. It was the condecending tone used by a couple of the head honchos when directing the masses. It was the way they treated several friends of mine, as if they were somehow superior, not simply facilitating the attendees' convention experience. It was the lack of planning for the concert and other events (such as Snape discussions) that would need a LOT of space. It was the piss-poor handling of the costume contest. It was the $600 fee to be a vendor. It was the way people, no matter how old or competent, were treated like children by the organizers. It was the attitude. It was how they threatened to revoke my registration because people had arranged to meet me at the ball to look at some of my wands. (I feel the need to point out that the Sheraton itself was not the domain of HPEF, and unless I was selling my wands INSIDE an area reserved by HPEF, I was NOT VIOLATING THE RULES. No money changed hands at the ball, where Prophecy's goonies threatened my registration -- although I will point out that the Securor who gave me the warning was actually trying to help me avoid being caught by Big Brother, but Big Brother still needs to bugger off in this case And last time I checked, they didn't reserve the lobby, the hallway, or the ladies' bathroom, which are all Fair Game as far as I'm concerned, especially considering I would have paid a vendor fee if it had been REMOTELY reasonable. Suck my nonexistant cock, bitches.) It's how HPEF seems to have forgotten that it used to be "of the fandom, by the fandom, and for the fandom". The Prophecy attendees are paying customers, but they were treated like HPEF's personal flock of sheep. And this felt more like a money-making scheme than a non-profit convention. Tell me, Oh Great Gurus of HPEF, did you use the $600 vendor fees, the increased registration fees, and everything else to pay for your own hotel rooms? Did your accountant (the same guy who initiated the threat against my registration) help you write that off as tax-deductible?

I filled out one of the comment cards on Sunday. I hope they listen. If not... well... look at how we rallied against LJ. After fandom chewed up and spit out Six Apart, HPEF would be like an after-dinner mint.Finally, on a more personal fandom note, I think I'm going to try to get back into fan art. I used to draw, but our darling lizardspots convinced me, in the days during and following Sectus, that I should try my hand at it again. So, I'm going to attempt to get back into that. I'm also going to start paying more attention to my fics. Yes, I'll spend time writing the next chapter of Convergence. Yes, I have some shorter fics to write and finish. I'll post them after the insanity dies down. But I promise, I'll start paying more attention to fandom. The conventions just reminded me what I love about my fandom, and why you guys are so important to me.

Flight went well. I'm here in London with <lj user="kriken">. We're settled into our hotel, and we've found an internet cafe. We could get wireless in our room, but it's £1 per TEN BLOODY MINUTES. Sorry, I'm not bending over for that. Just insane. I might use it briefly, but that's it.

So, please don't expect me to be online much. I'm hoping that once the convention starts, there will be access to wireless on the university campus. If not, well... cut me loose and don't expect lengthy IM chats each day!

Also, much to my dismay, the texting programme I had tried to purchase was NOT what I had expected, and I'm not using it. It's not for texting FROM non-US countries. It's for texting from the US to OTHER countries. Text messages (sent or received) will cost me fifty cents each, so PLEASE use them discerningly if you plan to use them at all.

Other than that, the weather is lovely (no rain today - knock on wood), cool and clear, and I had the most delicious moussaka at a Turkish restaurant for dinner. (VERY full right now - need to go for a walk.)

Tomorrow, we're going on a walking tour (kriken, me, and possibly Azhure, and whomever else we can gather unto ourselves), maybe meet up with the other tour groups, maybe follow the "automated" tour that Kriket downloaded (it's really cool), and all in all... hell, we're gonna end up in a pub sampling the local libations. :D

Anyhow... I've got to e-mail the family before they bug out. Yeah. *headdesk*

So, yes my loves, I'm in Kansas now. Settling into life with my incredible, wonderful, absolutely awesome girlfriend. Did I mention that I'm in love? Oh, well, just in case... yeah, I've fallen hard. All the way to Kansas. I'll be visiting the norhtheast as often as possible. There are so many friends back there that I already miss. Plus, do you HONESTLY think I could live the rest of my life in KANSAS? No, both me and woman-of-my-dreams are moving back to the northeast. Probably not the Boston-Metro area, but probably within an easy drive of Boston. In the meantime, we're doing little home improvements. I finished some projects yesterday... garden on the back patio, finishing a cedar chest, etc. We're also looking for a new bed, getting ready for a big barbeque this weekend with some friends, and a bigger thing next weekend.

So, yeah... this weekend... I had considered taking an impromptu trip to New Orleans. As some of you know, I'm going to Prophecy and Sectus, but hadn't planned to go to Phoenix Rising. Because I'm closer to Lousisiana from here, I'd thought about just going, but there are so many things going on here. If it weren't for the barbeque this weekend, I'd go, but between all the things going on here, and the fact that I just purchased the plane tickets for the other two conventions, I decided to stick with the original plan. So, to all the people who were hoping I'd change my mind and go to PR... sorry loves. But, come visit me in Kansas? A few of us are actually considering holding an "unofficial convention" sometime this year. Basically, a major slasher's get-together. More on this later.

In other news... I've been carving wands like crazy. I'm getting much better at this, and some of my pieces are absolutely gorgeous. I might be getting a vendor's table at Sectus, depending on how many I carve by the end of next month. I'm putting one wand in the charity art show at Sectus, too. I hope to have at least 50 completed, and my biggest hope is to be able to cover the cost of attending the conventions this summer with the sale of my wands. (I'm taking orders!)

And finally... I'm sorry, I haven't posted the first installment to the sequel to Eclipse yet. "Convergence" has taken a back-burner to moving, settling in, and everything else going on. I just haven't been in a writing mindset. I promise, soon. *sigh* Someone hold me to that, okay?

Anyhow, I've got to get going. We're heading out for the activities of the weekend. I'll talk to everyone soon. And... SQUEE! The conventions are coming up! (People at PR... tell me how it goes, okay?)*hugs*